At INFODAD, we rank everything we review with plus signs, on a scale from one (+) [disappointing] to four (++++) [definitely worth considering]. We mostly review (+++) or better items. Very rarely, we give an exceptional item a fifth plus. We are independent reviewers and, as parents, want to help families learn which books, music, and computer-related items we and our children love...or hate. INFODAD is a service of TransCentury Communications, Inc., Fort Myers, Florida, infodad@gmail.com.

Neil Gaiman’s strange and
wonderful The Graveyard Book (2008)
has spawned a strange and differently wonderful graphic-novel adaptation that
incorporates Gaiman’s words, abridged and modified by P. Craig Russell to fit
the graphic-novel format, and features illustrations by Russell and seven other
first-rate artists. Published as a two-volume hardcover set, this adaptation is
costly and is clearly intended to stay on bookshelves for a long time to come –
and deserves to. Gaiman’s story of a boy whose entire family is assassinated by
a mysterious man named Jack, and who flees the scene of butchery to seek and
improbably find solace amid the ghosts in a nearby graveyard, is a tale of
old-fashioned wonder, a creepy, thought-provoking, occasionally amusing canvas
peopled by people long dead and by creatures that are people-shaped but are
really something else. The marvelous thing about Russell’s adaptation is how
clearly it hews to Gaiman’s story while enriching it through illustrations that
effectively highlight the tale’s visual underpinnings. There are little touches
of strictly visual humor here and there: for example, in Russell’s illustrations
of the chapter in which the boy, named Nobody Owens by the denizens of the
graveyard, meets a girl his own age, Scarlett is seen sitting on a bench,
reading – and what she is reading is Life
magazine. The wry humor of Gaiman’s original is here, too, as in his giving
ghouls such names as the Duke of Westminster, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, the
Emperor of China, and the 33rd President of the United States; and
in the wonderfully fairy-tale-like chapter called “Danse Macabre” (illustrated
by Jill Thompson), in which the living and dead temporarily, joyfully and
mysteriously interact. The frights are present as well: in the murder scene of
the opening chapter (illustrated by Kevin Nowlan entirely in dark colors,
except for the bright red blood); in the chapter with the ghouls (illustrated
by Tony Harris and Scott Hampton), showing the bizarre, almost Lovecraftian
city of Ghûlheim; and in the
cruelties of the purely human world, especially in “The Witch’s Headstone”
(illustrated by Galen Showman) and “Nobody Owens’ School Days” (illustrated by
David Lafuente).

The multi-artist approach does
have some weaknesses, as the appearances of Bod’s guardian, Silas, of the ghost
witch, Liza, and of Bod himself, all change disconcertingly from time to time –
a particular issue when it comes to the supernatural characters, since one of
Gaiman’s points is that for those in a graveyard, nothing will ever change
again (one reason the dead agree to help raise Bod to adulthood). A notable
example of this issue occurs in the first volume, in the final panel of the
chapter that ends on page 108 and the splash panel of the chapter starting on
the opposite page, 109: Bod abruptly changes from an anime-inspired,
large-eyed, wide-mouthed youth with an almost feminine appearance to a much
more realistic-looking boy of the same age. It is also worth pointing out that
some notable aspects of Gaiman’s story, such as the death of Miss Lupescu, have
less impact in the graphic novel than in the original. These, however, are minor
matters in the overall excellence of the visual presentation. The adaptation
does not try to gloss over the few weaknesses of the original, such as the
eventual explanation for the murder of Bod’s family – a reason that readers
could not have anticipated and that comes so far out of nowhere that it seems
to have been grafted onto an otherwise taut and well-told tale. The fact is
that The Graveyard Book Graphic Novel
enhances Gaiman’s novel in some ways even though it is somewhat less effective
in others, inevitably playing up some points and playing down others because of
the need to compress and illustrate what happens. These are the pleasures and
perils of any adaptation to graphic-novel form – and in this case, the
resulting work is a masterly one that, for those willing to spend $40 for it,
will be a highly welcome addition to a collection of tales of the weird and
wonderful.

The Magic Shop books by
Bruce Coville are considerably milder and, by design, a great deal more amusing
than The Graveyard Book, but they are
just as delightful in their own way as Gaiman’s novel is in its. Paperbacks of
all five are now available in a slipcase edition quite suitable for gift-giving
or simply for rediscovering these delightfully offbeat fables – or discovering
them for the first time. They are The
Monster’s Ring (1982, revised 2002); Jeremy
Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher (1991); Jennifer
Murdley’s Toad (1992); The Skull of
Truth (1997); and Juliet Dove, Queen
of Love (2003). The connective tissue among the books is one of those
quintessential fairy-tale devices: a magic shop that really is magic and really
does contain magical objects, but that can only be found when people really need
to find it – or it really needs to find them. The proprietor is, of course,
enigmatic if not downright spooky, and his name is Mr. Elives (pronounced
“mystery lives” – what else?). In all the books, the kids who visit the shop
get just what they have coming to them, whether they know it or not; in fact,
they do not know it at first but come to know it eventually – whatever “it” may
be. In the first book, Russell
Crannaker, victim of bullies at school and at home, finds himself bullied (so
he thinks) into buying a peculiar green ring that can give him a way to stop
bullies forever – if he dares to take it. The shortest of the books, The Monster’s Ringwas updated by Coville in 2002 to fit more
neatly with the later ones, notably by the author’s addition to it of two
talking rats that he had not actually introduced until the third book, Jennifer Murdley’s Toad. The second of
the Magic Shop books is the best known: Jeremy gets a strange egg from the
magic shop, soon discovers that it hatches into a creature with which not even
his father, a veterinarian, could possibly be familiar, and learns as the
dragon grows just how much he and it need each other. In the third book,
Jennifer, who has always longed to be pretty, somehow leaves the magic shop
with an especially ugly toad that, however, can talk – and that eventually
helps her confront her fears and discover that there is more than one way to
have a beautiful life. The skull in the fourth book gets into the hands of
habitual liar Charlie Eggleston, who discovers that it lets him say only the truth, no matter how painful
that may be for him and those around him. In this book, Coville produces the
very apt and thoughtful statement, “You can have truth, or you can have mercy.
…Generally you cannot expect both.” Finally, Coville has shy Juliet Dove be
given a magic-shop amulet that makes her irresistible to everyone she meets –
and that she only begins to understand when Jennifer Murdley’s rats show up to
help her figure out what is going on and why. The biggest problem with the
Magic Shop books, as young readers will likely realize after reading them, is
that there aren’t any more – Coville has since moved on to other topics, albeit
ones with similar mixtures of silliness and depth. The complete Magic Shop set
is no bargain – bought individually, the paperbacks would cost $34.95 – but families
that do not already have the books should certainly consider getting them this
way, neatly slipcased and presented with all the elegance they deserve (that
is, some, but not too much).
Individually and together, they are delightful to read – and more
thought-provoking than their continual bouts of humor make they seem at first
to be.

As board books go, the two
new ones from Kate Stone are exceptionally attractive – and unusual, too.
Although they lie flat when closed, the books have spines that are wider than
the pages, allowing some particularly cute art to appear on the spines and
making the books stand out from others. The oversize spines mean that the books
stay open quite nicely at any chosen page, but the left-hand pages do not open
flat – the spines hold them slightly elevated. The unusual design, which also
includes much-thicker-than-normal pages, makes these books stand out among the
many others designed to show the youngest children a few things about colors
and numbers. Colors has bright left-hand
pages featuring designs in each color mentioned – a red design and the word
“red,” then a blue design and the word “blue,” and so forth. Right-hand pages
show an item of each color and use even more of that color in the illustration:
the apples and the word “apple” are both red, the pig and the word “pig” both
pink, the frog and the word “frog” both green, and so on. This is a charming
and visually attractive way to convey simple information – and a similarly
pleasing approach is used in Numbers.
In this case, each page, whether left or right, gets a number and illustration:
“2 Houses,” for example, and “7 birds.” The number and objects, attractively
colored, are shown inside a circle within each more-or-less-square,
rounded-corner page; outside the circle are designs in complementary or
contrasting colors – blue waves on the “4 sailboats” page, pink squiggles on
the page with “9 flowers,” and on and on. Stone’s board books are very sturdy,
easy for even little hands to hold, and so nicely drawn and colored that small
children will take to them immediately and enthusiastically.

Animals, Animals, Animals is for older kids, who can read the
simple texts themselves and appreciate the details that Steve Jenkins and Robin
Page provide. The umbrella title is for a slipcase box that includes hardcover
reprints of What Do You Do with a Tail
Like This? (originally published in 2003), Move! (which dates to 2006), and My First Day (initially released in 2013). These are short,
well-written books that neatly describe elements of the lives of the animals
they show. The earliest of them deals not only with tails but also with other
distinguishing features, such as ears, eyes and feet. Jenkins’ illustrations
offer closeups of each feature, and the following pages explain something about
the way the animals use those parts of their anatomy. For example, “If you’re a
cricket, you hear with ears that are on your knees,” and “If you’re a gecko,
you use your sticky feet to walk on the ceiling.” The animals are drawn
realistically rather than anthropomorphically, posed to show some of the
fascinating things their anatomy allows them to do: “If you’re an egg-eating
snake, you use your mouth to swallow eggs larger than your head.” In Move! – which is slightly larger than
the other two books, being rectangular rather than square – what one animal
does connects cleverly in the narrative to what the next one does. For example,
“A blue whale dives deep, deep, deep…” appears on one page; on the next page the
sentence continues, “…and swims below the ocean waves.” And then, on that same
page, comes the start of the next sentence, beneath a picture of the next
animal: “An armadillo swims across a stream…” And on the following page: “…and,
when startled, leaps straight up.” That page then has a crocodile leaping to
grab a meal – and so forth. The flow of this book – which, again, features
accurately portrayed animals shown in such a way that their actions go well with
the text – will pull young readers along from start to finish. The third work
here, My First Day, is written in a
different way, one that explains, as the subtitle has it, “What Animals Do on
Day One.” Here the animals themselves are made narrators of their
first-day-of-life stories, although, again, there is nothing anthropomorphic in
the illustrations. The Siberian tiger cub, for example, explains, “I was
helpless. I couldn’t even open my eyes. My mother cleaned me, fed me, and kept
me safe.” And the illustration shows a mother tiger gently licking her cub. The
leatherback turtle, on the other hand, says, “I raced to the water. The beach
was a dangerous place, and I was on my own as soon as I hatched.” All three of
these books feature pages at the end that give more information on the animals
shown – and the neat package called Animals,
Animals, Animals contains a page of 20 stickers as a bonus. This is a
highly informative, very well-presented set of three books that will be
especially attractive as a gift in the upcoming holiday season.

A single gift book that will
be as much fun for adults as for children, Barbara O’Brien’s Dogface is pretty much exactly what its
title says: a book filled with photos of expressive canine faces. Except for an
introduction, O’Brien provides no text here – just the name and breed of each
dog she has photographed. That leaves readers free to read whatever they wish
into the poses. Sam the whippet has his mouth wide open – is that astonishment,
perhaps? Jack, a mixed breed, has his ears perked up and his eyes looking
slightly (perhaps slyly?) to the right. Sophie, also a mixed breed, is winking
– yes, winking – with her long pink tongue sticking all the way out of her
mouth. Sampson, a goldendoodle, offers a big yawn – no mistaking that! Butters, an American Staffordshire
terrier, has a tilted head and eyes looking up to the right in an expression
that seems decidedly quizzical. Gus, a Dogue de Bordeaux, is all wrinkles and
seriousness and seems decidedly downcast. Sassy looks right at the camera with
lips in a straight line, as if asking what exactly is going on – the expression
may have something to do with the bright red-and-black bow clipped neatly atop
the Yorkshire terrier’s head. This is one of those “pass-around” books: $16 is
a high price for a small, short, all-photo book that is a delight to go through
once or twice but will not likely have a great deal of staying power, but Dogface is the kind of book that is a
lot of fun to share with other people – bringing plenty of smiles and knowing
expressions to fellow dog lovers and turning the book into a bargain through
its content of sheer enjoyment.

There are lots of smiles to
be had as well in Hugh Murphy’s second foray into the life and times of a
modern T-Rex family – or what would be their life and times if they existed. As
in his first book, T-Rex Trying…,
Murphy in T-Rex Trying and Trying
uses the anatomical oddity of T-Rex – huge, powerful body with tiny, apparently
useless (to human eyes) upper limbs – to create absurd cartoon sequences in
which the gigantic predator wants only to fit into modern life, but finds the
simplest of tasks simply impossible for him and his family. He cannot use a
magnifying glass, because his arms are too short to put it in front of his
eyes. He cannot swat a fly, even with two flyswatters, because his arms do not
reach beyond his own body. He cannot bait a hook – there is no way to get the
hook close enough to his arms for him to reach it. He cannot blow a whistle,
because he cannot get it to his mouth. And so on and so forth, in a series of
ridiculous, imaginative drawings that make perfect sense within Murphy’s
thoroughly skewed world. Really, T-Rex’s anatomy makes all sorts of modern
activities impossible for him – selfies, eating a lollipop, picking his nose –
and Murphy’s line drawings hilariously (and rather pityingly) show what happens
when T-Rex tries ever so hard to do any of these things. Just imagining the
hapless gigantic predator trying to flush an airline toilet or eat an airline
meal is funny enough – seeing him try those things through Murphy’s
illustrations is even funnier. There is ultimately a degree of pathos in
T-Rex’s many plights, and this makes T-Rex
Trying and Trying something more than a book of one-liners. We can
empathize with this wholly fictional character because we too, even with our
more-adjustable anatomy and greater brain power, have trouble at times dealing
with the expectations and inconvenient conveniences of modern living. T-Rex may
have anatomical reasons for being unable to reach the snooze button, and
She-Rex may have similar reasons for struggling to put on a bra or eye shadow,
but anyone who has ever had difficulties of his or her own with these and
similar tasks will empathize with these T-Rex troubles. By the time T-Rex and
She-Rex have Wee-Rex, and T-Rex struggles to play peek-a-boo or install a car
seat, anyone not already dissolving in laughter will have to face the fact that
he or she has only a prehistoric sense of humor.

The optimism and gratitude
pervading Lissa Warren’s memoir will be immediately clear to anyone who reads
the book with its title in mind. This is a work that could just as easily have
been called “The Bad Luck Cat,” but
no: through trouble and turmoil with the cat at the center of her family’s
life, Warren persists in identifying Ting, a seven-pound Korat, as a positive
force. To outsiders reading The Good Luck
Cat, this may on the face of it seem to be something of a stretch. One
example among many: new to the Warren home, Ting goes exploring and falls into
the toilet, and “we heard a huge splash coming from the half-bathroom by the
kitchen, followed by what can only be described as a death yowl. We went
running and Mom got there first, reaching into the bowl just as I plowed into
her, unable to stop because I had on socks and we have hardwood floors. We
fell, and Ting, who had hooked a desperate paw into the sleeve of Mom’s
sweater, came with us. Mom whacked the back of her head on the bathroom wall,
‘Mommy Lissa’ (as I had come to be called) whacked the back of her head on her
mom’s front teeth, and Ting whacked both of us with her now-free scissors-paws
in an effort to get the hell out of Dodge as the towel bar came down with a
clatter.” This is a good luck cat?

Yes, anecdotes like this are
common in pet-loving families, and they attain a veneer of pleasant nostalgia
once the inevitable physical hurts have healed. But things get more difficult
for the Warren family, not less, as The
Good Luck Cat progresses. It is not just that Ting climbs to the top of the
Christmas tree on Christmas Eve to perch, “a silver star atop the highest
bough,” and then manages to “lose her balance and take the entire tree down
with her.” That event, and similar ones, are only preludes to grimmer
occurrences. Halfway through the book, “around the time Ting became a
teenager…Dad’s health really started to decline.” Ting, along with the other
family members, knows something is not right, and then begins a series of
events with which, unfortunately, families must cope all the time – and which
are never easy. Warren details her father’s pain, his depression, his back
surgery, his diagnosis with myeloproliferative disease (which frequently
progresses to leukemia), his angina, and his eventual hospitalization and death
in December 2008. Warren both personalizes the emotional pain and keeps it at
something of a distance by focusing on how Ting, as a member of the family,
responds to Jerry Warren’s death. And then there is more: Ting is diagnosed with a heart condition, and the book becomes the
story of saving her by arranging for implantation of a pacemaker – a human pacemaker, further cementing the
bond among family members. “Soon her fur grows back. She is her old self again,
save for a pronounced bump near her ribs – like the face of a watch atop a tiny
wrist. She is completely oblivious to it.” But the Warren humans are far from
oblivious to Ting’s condition, and the cat seems equally aware of developments
around her – which become still more complicated when Warren herself starts
having a series of mysterious symptoms and eventually gets a serious diagnosis
of her own: she has multiple sclerosis. The
Good Luck Cat? The fact that Warren calls Ting that is testimony to the
close bond we humans feel with our companion animals – and to the level of
unquestioning support we receive from them in a way that is so often sadly
lacking in those of our own species. Over time, Ting needs ever more medical
care, as Warren herself comes to terms with her own illness and her mother “mothers”
both human and feline. The depth of the family’s bond with Ting is shown in
Warren’s comment, “When I lose her, I will mourn her like I’ve mourned all the
other people I’ve lost.” All the other
people…not “all the people.” Turning Ting into an honorary human may be
hopelessly anthropomorphic, but it testifies, as does Warren’s entire book, to
bonds not easily explained and, like all bonds of love, never sundered – not
really. Good luck, indeed.

Luck is much worse for a
hamster named Sweetie Pie in a Chris Van Allsburg book that, although intended
for younger readers, raises some of the same issues of human-animal interaction
that Warren presents. The Misadventures
of Sweetie Pie is a happy-sounding title, but just like The Good Luck Cat, it is a title not
fully descriptive of the events detailed inside. A pet-shop hamster,
deliberately drawn by Van Allsburg with human mannerisms and expressions, goes
home with a girl he calls Pigtails, who names him Sweetie Pie and holds him
constantly. Van Allsburg makes it clear that this is not a story of warmth,
though, stating, “Since [holding and petting time] was the only time he was let
out of his small cage, he pretended to like it.” Clearly, this is scarcely a
typical warm-and-fuzzy story: the girl soon loses interest in Sweetie Pie as
she spends more and more time using the computer, and the hamster has nothing
to do but eat – getting fat and feeling lonely. The girl ends up selling the
hamster to a boy who takes Sweetie Pie home on his bike, and “for the second
time in his life, the hamster felt the wind in his fur and smelled the great
outdoors. He breathed in deeply, but was back inside before he exhaled.”
Unfortunately, the boy’s family has a dog that repeatedly attacks the hamster’s
cage – the picture of the teeth-bared canine attacking the cage bars, seen from
the hamster’s point of view, is genuinely frightening – so the boy gives
Sweetie Pie to his cousin. She is something of a nightmare, forcing the hamster
into doll clothes and then into a hamster ball that rolls away down the street,
into and through traffic (another scary scene), and eventually into a park. The
girl does not even go after the ball, leaving Sweetie Pie abandoned. Another
girl finds the ball the next morning and, delighted, takes Sweetie Pie home,
but her mother screams and refuses to have the “rat” in the house. So the girl
brings Sweetie Pie to school, where he becomes a class pet and gets more and
more lonely, especially when he notices a squirrel on the window sill, in the
outdoors that Sweetie Pie can never reach. Then winter break comes, and a boy
takes Sweetie Pie and his cage out of school for the holidays – but he forgets
all about the hamster while playing ball, and leaves the cage behind to be
covered with snow. The picture of Sweetie Pie blanketed in white, with only his
ears and nose showing, is filled with pathos, and by this time the book has
become genuinely depressing in a way that is highly unusual for a children’s
picture book. Van Allsburg, however, manages to figure out a way to create a
happy ending, in which it turns out (in a scene after winter ends) that Sweetie
Pie was able to escape the cage and is now living in the trees with the
squirrels, “with no bars between him and the deep blue sky.” Unfortunately,
this conclusion feels tacked-on and is scientifically inaccurate: hamsters are
burrowers, not tree climbers, and the notion of one being in effect “adopted”
by squirrels is an outlandish one. The
Misadventures of Sweetie Pie is really a cautionary tale, from which
sensitive children can learn a great deal about the right and wrong way to
interact with any companion animal. But it is also a sad story, one that those
same sensitive children may have difficulty handling on their own if they are
not taken in by Van Allsburg’s valiant attempt to craft a happy ending. This
can actually be an important book for a child to read before getting a pet –
but parental oversight is advised to be sure that the child ends up feeling
reassured, not saddened, by the tale.

Another cautionary
people-and-pets story, whose happy ending is less contrived and whose overall
tone is somewhat lighter, is Garth Stein’s Enzo
Races in the Rain! Enzo himself – a puppy named after race driver Enzo
Ferrari – narrates the book, explaining “I feel more like a person” than a dog,
but people “don’t understand my barks. It drives me crazy.” Enzo lives on a
farm until he is sold to a man and his daughter, Zoë. The man himself is a race-car driver – it is he who suggests
the name Enzo – and just like the unfortunate Sweetie Pie, Enzo gets to see a
lot of the world on the way to his new home: “Who knew the world was so big?”
Enzo soon finds that he needs to adapt to a lot of non-farm things: there is
nowhere to run with abandon inside a house, and Zoë’s stuffed animals are scary. Before Zoë can put a collar on Enzo, he pushes through the pet door into
the yard, and then under the fence through a small gap – suddenly finding
himself in the middle of traffic, and soon after being pursued by a whole crowd
of people. Enzo simply wants to run and play, but even young readers will
quickly see that he is in real danger, made worse by the people’s inability to
catch him – he is simply too speedy. Then it starts to rain, and Enzo is soon
miserable – until he realizes that he can use his speed and his nose to find
his way home. He does just that, returning to find Zoë in tears and her father trying to reassure her. “I run into Zoë’s arms like a race car driver
speeding home,” Enzo says, and the book ends in a burst of warmth and
enthusiasm – and a firmly attached collar (and presumably some fence repair).
R.W. Alley’s illustrations do a fine job of conveying the many moods of the
story’s characters, and the final, wordless page – showing the now-three-member
family eating dinner on the home’s porch – is a real charmer. Still, there is a
lesson about responsibility and proper pet care for young children in Enzo Races in the Rain! Parents who
extract and reinforce it will find the book genuinely helpful in turning
children into responsible stewards of companion animals as they – kids and
animals alike – grow.

The remarkable Shostakovich
symphonic cycle led by Vasily Petrenko for Naxos comes to a superb close with
the release of the absolutely first-rate performance of Symphony No. 13, a
vocal work so tightly knit into symphonic form that it is nearly impossible to
say at which point one shades into the other. Petrenko has consistently gotten
a nearly Russian sound from the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra in this
sequence, perhaps a touch lacking in deep lushness in the strings but otherwise
a formidable competitor for the sounds of Russian-based orchestras, with
piercing woodwinds, growling brass and an overall balance and feeling
reflecting both the solemnity and the comedic aspects of Shostakovich’s music. In
No. 13, known as “Babi Yar” for the poem by Yevgeny Yevtushenko that is the
basis of the first movement, Petrenko conducts a work that sounds like the sort
of symphony Mussorgsky would have written if he had worked in the form. The rumbling,
growling bass of Alexander Vinogradov and the full-throated men’s voices from
the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Choir and the Huddersfield Choral Society
produce, in their back-and-forth antiphonies and their combined power, a paean
and challenge to the Russia of 1962, when this symphony was written and had its
première. Petrenko paces the
work magnificently, the expansiveness of the “Babi Yar” movement standing in
striking contrast to the following scherzo on humor, and the three final
movements, played attacca, building
relentlessly from the drudgery of everyday Soviet life to an affirmation of
individual power and accomplishment – a progression that still resonates deeply
but that was surely very uncomfortable for Soviet authorities even in the
comparative openness of Khrushchev’s rule. Petrenko does an excellent job of
keeping the vocal elements in the forefront most of the time, while allowing
the purely orchestral ones to weave in and out among the voices and enhance or
comment upon the words. By the time the symphony fades into silence, looking
forward as it does so to the conclusion of Shostakovich’s final symphony, No.
15, Petrenko has taken the full measure of this work and shown how much more it
is than its “Babi Yar” title indicates. This is a triumphant conclusion to a
Shostakovich cycle that has been absolutely top-notch throughout, giving the
lie to the notion that only Russian orchestras can perform Shostakovich with
all the understanding and gravitas he
requires. Petrenko here establishes himself as a pre-eminent conductor of this
composer’s works – a true master of their many moods.

Even a masterful conductor
can, however, sometimes fall shy of complete mastery of particular repertoire.
The fascinatingly flawed Wiener Symphoniker performance of Carlos Kleiber
conducting Mahler’s Das Lied von der
Erde, on the orchestra’s own label, is a case in point and something of a
cautionary tale. Kleiber (1930-2004) was a quirky, difficult and highly demanding
conductor, indifferent or hostile to being seen on camera or recorded. A
meticulous craftsman who depended on multiple rehearsals of even well-known
music in order to craft performances whose sweep and detail were remarkably
involving and revelatory, he was never a Mahler conductor, and in fact this
1967 live recording of Das Lied von der
Erde lets listeners hear the one and only time Kleiber ever conducted
Mahler’s music. The circumstances that brought this about, explained in the
CD’s accompanying booklet, created a situation that was far from ideal for
conductor or orchestra – or acoustically: the recording required considerable
restoration before it could be released. It is therefore somewhat surprising
that this CD is good enough to get a (+++) rating and is more than a historical
curiosity – although it has value even on that basis. Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde is in some
significant ways a prototype for Shostakovich’s “Babi Yar,” with Mahler
intermingling the lied tradition with
that of the symphony and creating something tremendously powerful that combines
elements of both. As in the much later Shostakovich work, Das Lied von der Erde has a vocal focus with interspersed
instrumental material – the two more balanced in Mahler than in Shostakovich.
Mahler’s music is more personal than Shostakovich’s: written after the grand
Symphony No. 8, Das Lied von der Erde
offers an intensity of individualism within which to explore the grandest
themes of life and death. Kleiber was blessed with two outstanding soloists in
Christa Ludwig and Waldemar Kmentt: their expressiveness, especially Ludwig’s,
helps overcome Kleiber’s rather cool and distanced approach to the music. Kmentt
delivers his drinking songs with a strong voice and considerable fervor, but it
is the delicacy of Ludwig’s singing and her heartfelt handling of Der Abschied that are the high points of
the performance. Kleiber asks less of the Wiener Symphoniker than the ensemble
was capable of providing – being limited to four rehearsals certainly being one
reason. The orchestra sounds too often as if it is going through the motions of
playing a work it knows well: a sense of discovery, of seeking and extracting
the full emotional impact of Das Lied von
der Erde, is missing. This is a fine recording in many ways, but it is the
performance of a mid-level conductor and orchestra, and that is not an apt
description of either Kleiber or the Wiener Symphoniker. The presentation also
has some oddities: the titles of the fourth and fifth movements are reversed on
the back cover (although not in the booklet), and there are no texts provided.
These matters make the release seem almost like a throwaway, and it deserves
better – even if it is scarcely an ideal showcase for the excellence of this conductor
and this orchestra.

Marin Alsop’s Prokofiev
cycle with the São Paulo
Symphony Orchestra, on the other hand, is shaping up as a strong one for both
the ensemble and the conductor. The third Naxos release in this series, after
ones including Symphony No. 5 and the second, longer version of No. 4, gets a
(++++) rating for showing Alsop’s considerable strength in the more-modernistic
elements of Prokofiev’s music and for giving the orchestra a chance to show off
its fine sectional balance. Symphony No. 1, the “Classical,” is bright, even
ebullient here, with Alsop and the ensemble seeming to have genuine fun with
most of the work – although, frustratingly, Alsop shows one of her weaknesses
as a conductor when she tinkers with the brief third movement, the “Gavotta,” by
turning it into an interlude of stops and starts rather than a piece flowing as
smoothly as the rest of the symphony. Symphony No. 2, Prokofiev’s entry into
the spirit of deliberate modernism, 1920s-Paris-style, is here as craggy and intense
as can be, filled with a great deal of clatter and outright noise but retaining
classical underpinnings structurally traceable to, of all things, Beethoven’s
final piano sonata. Alsop likes the clangor here and never attempts to bring
out what softness the music has – not that there is a great deal of it. This is
unsubtle music, and Alsop seems quite comfortable with it, pulling great gouts
of sound from the orchestra and eschewing any attempt at warmth. It is a very
effective performance, although one that never attempts to look much beyond the
raucous elements of the work. The short, early Dreams, written when Prokofiev was 19, is somewhat less effective
here: this is a work of color and lyricism, considerably influenced by
Scriabin, and while the orchestra plays it well, the work itself drifts and
does not seem to have captured Alsop’s imagination. Still, it makes a nice
contrast to the two symphonies: Alsop’s cycle is shaping up impressively.

The symphonic elements of
Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet are
clear throughout the ballet and the suite drawn from it, and Riccardo Muti
emphasizes them in his performance with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on the
ensemble’s own CSO Resound label. Muti is generally more comfortable with the
Romantic and neo-Romantic repertoire than Alsop is, but less adept with the
more-modern-sounding elements of a score like this one. The result is a
performance of mixed intensity and only occasional affability, its warmer
elements brought out effectively but its more-dramatic ones, such as “Death of
Tybalt,” somewhat lacking in force. Even in the more lyrical sections, the
rhythms and forward thrust tend to be a bit flabby at times, as Muti dwells on
some emotive sections while holding the overall progress of the music back.
Individually, all these matters are mere details, and this recording gets a
(+++) rating for its many fine elements and the first-rate orchestral playing.
But this is not a wholly convincing performance, and unfortunately, the
49-minute Romeo and Juliet Suite is
the only music on the disc – a highly unusual decision when working in a medium
that can readily accommodate 80 minutes. This means that the suite is the only
reason for purchasing the CD – and although there are certainly many pleasures
in the recording, that will not be reason enough for listeners other than ones
highly devoted to the Chicago Symphony and/or to Muti’s podium manner.

Arrigo Boito’s version of
the Faust legend is not performed
particularly often, and the San Francisco Opera’s version on DVD, released on the
EuroArts label, helps show why. Boito was a fine librettist – for Verdi’s Otello and Falstaff, Ponchielli’s La
Gioconda, and other works – and his book for his own opera is well done, even
including the latter part of the story, in which Faust travels back to the
ancient world to encounter Helen of Troy. Furthermore, Boito had some skill as
a composer, creating an opening scene for Mefistofele
in which the music mounts up and up, seeming to rise to impossible heights
before eventually settling, as it must; a moving death scene for Margherita;
and some fine choral writing. But the opera is woefully uneven, with more pages
of uninspired music than engaging ones. It takes a really excellent Mefistofele
to smooth over the many rough edges and hold the work together. Unfortunately,
Ildar Abdrazakov is not up to the task: his voice is neither powerful enough
nor of sufficient intensity to sweep the audience into the story and captivate
listeners. And Ramón Vargas, as
Faust, has a too-tight high register and some difficulty in phrasing in a
number of his arias – although his dying aria is very effective, as if he has
saved his best for last. The most consistent performer here is Patricia Racette
as Margherita (and Helen, called Elena in the opera). She manages to sing with
naïveté, nobility, grandeur and remorse as required, and her pronunciation and
phrasing are first-rate. Unfortunately, even she is at the mercy of the rather
flabby conducting of Nicola Luisotti, who dwells far too long on far too many
unremarkable elements of the music, resulting in a performance that too often
simply drags (the DVD set runs 145 minutes). The visuals do not really make up
for the musical lacks here, although they too have their moments. This is an
updated version of a Robert Carsen production from 1989 (restaged in 1994). But
the new version is directed by Laurie Feldman with altogether too much
ponderousness. The Prologue has the best setting to go with its wonderful
music: it takes place in God’s private opera house. A similar touch of offbeat
almost-comedy would serve other parts of Mefistofele
well, but that is not what the production delivers: pretty much everything is
taken very much at face value, and unfortunately, this opera’s face value is
not of the highest. Certainly this is a worthy recording of a work that
operagoers may have few chances to see in a live performance – but it is simply
not a terribly compelling production of an opera that also, alas, is not
terribly compelling.

Religion gets a different,
Old Testament treatment from James MacMillan and librettist Michael Symmons
Roberts in the chamber opera Clemency,
now available on BIS in a live recording of a Boston Chamber Opera production.
Even without visuals, the opera’s intimate setting and its concerns are easy to
follow: Abraham and Sarah are visited by three strangers, who reveal that when
they return in a year, Sarah will have a child – something she finds hard to
believe, given her age. Asked where they are going, the strangers reveal
themselves as angels and say they are on the way to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah
– leading Abraham and Sarah to argue with the angels and try to save the
townspeople in what is ultimately a futile attempt. David Kravitz and Christine
Abraham sing well in this world première
recording, and the string orchestra under David Angus provides a fine
accompaniment. MacMillan’s work is paired with an English translation of
Schubert’s Hagars Klage (“Hagar’s
Lament”), in which Hagar (sung by Michelle Trainor), mother of Abraham’s
firstborn child, sings of her sadness and anger after the two of them are
abandoned in the desert. Bible readers will know that Hagar’s story ends better
than that of Sodom and Gomorrah: God miraculously produces a well with water
for Hagar and Ishmael, who survives to marry and settle in the land of Paran.
Schubert’s song ends before this happens, but listeners who know these Bible
tales will see how well the Schubert and MacMillan works fit together, both
dealing with aspects of clemency – granted or not. The quietly contemplative
conclusion of MacMillan’s work is its most attractive element; by and large,
the music is chant-like and faintly Middle Eastern in flavor, pleasantly
unchallenging to hear and more than adequate to the story.

The music is thornier and
more complex in Leoš Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass, heard in the world première recording of its original 1927 version on a new Supraphon
release. There are a number of differences between this version and the 1928
one usually performed, but nothing that reduces the impact of the music or its
vibrant, rhythmic writing for soloists and chorus. The highlight remains the
penultimate movement, a fascinating organ solo that does not draw on any
particular church precedents and that practically explodes with wild,
continuous energy in a kind of perpetuum
mobile that is challenging for organists and surprising to anyone hearing
this mass for the first time. The organist here, Aleš Bárta, plays
skillfully and with feeling, although perhaps a little too matter-of-factly –
indeed, the whole performance under Tomáš Netopil is reverent enough, maybe
even a little too narrowly so: a touch more fiery enthusiasm would have been
welcome. Nevertheless, this is a fine reading of this major Janáček work, and it is accompanied by a
piece that is much less known: The
Eternal Gospel, a four-movement “Legend for Soloists, Mixed Choir and
Orchestra after the Poem by Jaroslav Vrchlický” that dates to 1914. This is nothing less than a cantata,
featuring soprano and tenor soloists in a work in which the composer transforms
overt religiosity into an expression of the contemporary world’s need for reconciliation
(the piece was first heard during World War I, in late 1917). Forthright and
direct, filled with lyricism and expressiveness, The Eternal Gospel is in some ways more accessible than the Glagolitic Mass, although the
better-known work is unquestionably more ambitious and innovative. The chance
to hear the two pieces together is one that all listeners interested in Janáček’s music will welcome.

Music that is mostly
religious and mostly more recent than Janáček’s is offered by the ensemble LaCappella (Antonia Bieker ,
Marie Tetzlaff, Rosalie Schüler, Magdalena Bauer, Madeleine Röhl and Karen
Tessmer) on a new CD entitled Shimmering.
The attraction here is as much the beauty of the voices and the overall subject
matter of the disc – explorations of facets of Mary, mother of Christ – as it
is the specific works, which vary in quality and level of interest. There is
little repertoire for female choir before the Romantic era, but one piece here
is quite old: Sancta et immaculata by
Francesco Guerrero (1528-1599), which is quite beautifully harmonized. From
later times, there are three pieces by Schumann: Im Meeres Mitten, Der Bleicheren Nachtlied, and Das verlassene Mägdlein. And there are three early-20th-century
works: Reger’s Mariae Wiegenlied and
Ravel’s Toi le Cœur de la Rose, both
arranged by Clytus Gottwald, and Maurice Duruflé’s Tota pulchra est. The pieces are not presented chronologically or
with any apparent reason for the sequence in which they are offered – a
weakness in a generally strong presentation that features particularly fine
ensemble cooperation. In addition to the seven works of the early 20th
century or before, there are eight more-recent ones: Shimmering—Ave generosa by Ola Gjeilo (born 1978); Ave Maria by Simon Wawer (born 1979); Assumpta est Maria by Vytautas Miškinis
(born 1954); De Angelis by Petr Eben
(1929-2007); Lux aeterna by Wolfgang
Drescher (born 1990); O magnum mysterium
by Colin Mawby (born 1936); O salutaris
hostia by Ēriks Ešenvalds (born 1977); and, as a final offering, Es saß ein klein wild Vögelein arranged
by Morten Vinther (born 1983) and Magdalena Bauer (born 1990). The selections
show that even in the modern age, Latin is generally the favored language for writing
works about Mary; and even in our largely secular time, aspects of her story
continue to resound with composers from many places and many backgrounds. There
is a certain uniformity both to the works and to the performances, lending the
disc a sense of evenness and timelessness that sometimes threatens to become
dull but never quite does – probably because the individual pieces are
generally short, and the entire CD lasts only 47 minutes. This Rondeau release
will appeal mainly to fans of female chamber choirs – a rarefied group, to be
sure, but one that will quickly warm to the skill with which LaCappella
performs this repertoire.

Listeners who prefer a mixed chorus and
works with a secular orientation will enjoy the very fine performances of 11
pieces by Seattle-based Choral Arts on a new CD of the music of Eric William
Barnum (born 1979). The LaCappella disc about Mary focuses on transcendent,
sacred love, while the Gothic Records release of Barnum’s music has a
distinctly secular flavor. Although Requiescat
and, in a different way, Remembered Light
have spiritual elements, other pieces here have a certain worldly abandon: Jenny Kiss’d Me, Afternoon on a Hill,
Moonlight Music and more. As a totality, these pieces look at aspects of
love under various circumstances and at different times of life – the CD
progresses through its 55 minutes more or less chronologically in terms of the
ways in which people’s attitudes toward and experiences of love change. Choral
Arts features great purity of tone, a fine blending of different voice ranges,
sure and solid ensemble work, and a pacing under Robert Bode that brings out
the varying elements and effects of Barnum’s music. The music itself is
interesting enough to sustain hearing and occasional rehearing, having elements
of folk and pop orientation within settings that are primarily classical in
style. None of the individual works is a particular standout, but as a whole,
the disc provides a warm and pleasant feeling of imagining and reimagining love
in its many mostly secular guises.

Lovers of organ music and of
the mellow, mellifluous sound of well-played brass will enjoy the new MSR
Classics CD featuring 11 works – most of them transcriptions – from nine
composers. Bach and Giovanni Gabrieli are represented twice, the former with
the well-known choral prelude Schmücke
dich, o liebe Seele and the Fantasia
in G, BWV 572; the latter with Canzon
Septimi Toni No. 2 and Canzon Noni
Toni from Sacrae Symphoniae.
There is no apparent order to the presentation of these four works or of the
others here: Suite of Dances from Les Fêtes Vénitiennes by André Campra; Senza Misura from the Sonata
for Trumpet and Organ, Op. 200 by Alan Hovhaness; Dream Pantomime from Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel;Adagio
from the Four Canonic Studies by
Schumann; Wie schön leuchtet der
Morgenstern by Buxtehude; Procession
of the Nobles from Rimsky-Korsakov’s Mlada;
and Solemn Entry of the Knights of the
Order of St. John by Richard Strauss. This is quite a disparate collection,
giving listeners a considerable taste of the way organ-and-brass arrangements
of music of many periods sound, and showing off Barbara Bruns’ skills at the
consoles of three Fisk organs in Massachusetts – at the Old West Church in
Boston, St. John’s Episcopal Church in Gloucester, and Christ Church in
Andover. Bruns’ sound mingles pleasantly, and frequently with considerable
splendor, with that of the Thompson Brass Ensemble, led by trumpeter James
Thompson. Not all the music is equally striking: the Gabrieli, Rimsky-Korsakov
and Strauss compositions are standouts, the Humperdinck and Schumann less so.
Still, the disc is a welcome opportunity for organists and organ fanciers to
hear the instrument in a combination that is of relatively recent vintage but
that carries with it considerable pleasure as a way of arranging music of
earlier times.

The pleasures are manifest
as well in a Gothic Records release focusing on the Wanamaker Grand Court Organ
in Philadelphia – the largest operational pipe organ in the world. Peter
Richard Conte is featured in four works, two of them very substantial indeed,
with which this hundred-year-old instrument is at least marginally connected.
Symphony No. 6 by Charles-Marie Widor is the best-known piece here, and Conte
gives it a fine, full-throated reading with the accompaniment of the ensemble
called Symphony in C, conducted by Rossen Milanov. Conte is in his 25th
year as Wanamaker Grand Court Organist – a somewhat puffed-up title that
nevertheless reflects the importance of this instrument. The Widor symphony was
first performed in this version on the Wanamaker organ in 1919, with Leopold
Stokowski conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra. A less-known organ symphony,
No. 2 by Félix Alexandre
Guilmant (1837-1911), is also on this disc – and also proves a very substantial
piece, its five movements well constructed to show off the capabilities of the soloist.
Guilmant did not write the work for the Wanamaker organ, which did not yet
exist in its present form, but he gave 40 recitals on its predecessor
instrument and is thus closely connected to its history. The connection of the
third composer heard on this disc, Joseph Jongen (1873-1953), is a bit more tenuous:
he wrote only three pieces for organ and orchestra, and one of them, A Grand Celebration, was indeed composed
for the Wanamaker – but that work is not given here. Instead, Conte and Milanov
offer Jongen’s other organ-and-orchestra works, Alleluja and Hymne, which
both draw more explicitly on the organ as a church instrument than do the
symphonies by Widor and Guilmant. Grand-scale organ music performed on a
grand-scale instrument is the order of the day here, in a program that bypasses
the usual helping of Bach and Buxtehude to deliver pleasures that may be
somewhat rarefied – organ music in general is something of an acquired taste –
but that are substantial for those who enjoy experiencing them.

The Grand Concerto for Organ and Orchestra by Stephen Paulus (born
1949) is conceived on a scale nearly as large as that of the Widor and Guilmant
works, but its structure and means of communication are quite different. It is
a work filled with the very wide contrasts typical of 21st-century
classical music (it dates to 2004), and its melodies and keyboard requirements
are broad, sweeping and meant to impress. The movement designations are
particularly apt: “Vivacious and Spirited,” “Austere; Foreboding,” and
“Jubilant.” Nathan J. Laube brings forth exactly those feelings and emotions in
a world première recording for
Naxos, and the Nashville Symphony under Giancarlo Guerrero – a conductor who
has worked with Paulus for many years – delivers strong, balanced and nuanced
accompaniment. Nearly as interesting in concept as the Grand Concerto is another work that here receives its world première: Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra—Three Places of
Enlightenment. The solo quartet (Jun Iwasaki and Carolyn Wann Bailey,
violins; Daniel Reinker, viola; Anthony LaMarchina, cello) is set against
orchestral strings that get as much of a workout as the soloists do. And that
is saying something, since these soloists are principals of their Nashville
Symphony sections (first and second violins, violas and cellos). Where this
1995 work falls short is not structurally but in its rather ordinary journey to
the supposed “places of enlightenment.” The movements are “From Within,” “From
Afar” and “From All Around and Radiating Ever Outward,” and the overall effect
is somewhat too New Age-y to evoke emotions beyond that of admiration for the
quality of the performance. The third work on this disc, and the only one
previously recorded, is the highly evocative Veil of Tears for String Orchestra, taken from Paulus’ Holocaust
oratorio, To Be Certain of the Dawn
(2005). Unlike the somewhat overdone Three
Places of Enlightenment, this short, quietly reflective piece conveys a sense
of mourning in a simple, straightforward and affecting manner.

For listeners whose tastes
run more to the keyboard of a percussion instrument (piano) than that of a wind
instrument (organ), Ingrid Fliter’s (++++) performance of Chopin’s Op. 28 Preludes will be a real treat. There are
many fine recordings of this music, and which one (or which ones) a listener selects will depend
largely on the particular emphasis that high-quality pianists choose to bring
to the works. Fliter goes for the emotions underlying the Preludes, seeing these pieces as a kind of “salon music with much
more depth” rather than chances for virtuoso display – although she is
certainly not lacking in technique. Her handling of several minor-key Preludes is especially involving: No. 8
in F-sharp minor, No. 10 in C-sharp minor, No. 22 in G minor and No. 24 in D
minor all come off particularly well here. The first three of those all have
the word molto before their tempo
indications, while No. 24 is marked Allegro
appassionato, and Fliter takes Chopin at his word, emphasizing in
particular the agitation built into and created by the music. No. 10 is
actually the shortest of the Preludes,
but Fliter does not allow it or similarly brief works, such as No. 7 in A, to
become mere punctuation points: she explores each piece carefully and
thoroughly, making up through involvement what the works lack in duration.
These Preludes are passionate in some
pianists’ readings, emotionally involving in many renditions. In Fliter’s Linn
Records recording, they are eloquent. The CD is filled out with five assorted Mazurkas and two Nocturnes, all of them treated with the same degree of respect and
the same seeking of their emotional core that Fliter brings to the set of Preludes. The result is a disc that is
not only well-played but also strongly emotionally expressive.

The playing quality is
certainly there as well in the 15th volume of Orion Weiss’
exploration of the complete Scarlatti harpsichord sonatas, of which there are
555. Weiss, however, follows a rather disingenuous pianistic practice by
calling these works “keyboard” sonatas, which they are not. Even more so than
other works of their time, these pieces are intended for the harpsichord and
specifically designed to be played on it – the complex hand-crossings of the
middle-period sonatas, for example, are directly connected to the instrument’s
action, scope and capabilities. No one would deny pianists the chance to play
these wonderful, compact, highly varied works. But the piano’s lesser elegance
and greater emotive power tend to lead to the sonatas being seen as emotional
vehicles in a way that Scarlatti never intended. Weiss, like other pianists who
perform this music, deliberately looks for connections both musical and
emotional, and thus offers 19 sonatas on his new Naxos recording in a sequence
having nothing to do with the works’ chronology and everything to do with the
ways in which the pianist believes they connect with each other – or wants them to interconnect. The specific
sonatas here, using their Kirkpatrick numbers, are: D minor, K. 552; C, K. 326;
A minor, K. 265; G, K. 455; E minor, K. 233; D, K. 177; B minor, K. 293; A, K.
220; F-sharp minor, K. 448; E, K. 216; D minor, K. 553; C, K. 72; F minor, K.
365; E-flat, K. 253; C minor, K. 230; B-flat, K. 439; G minor, K. 43; F, K.
296; and D minor, K. 92. The emotional reason for alternating major-key and
minor-key sonatas is clear, as is the mixture of early, middle and late ones to
attain greater emotive impact. Whether or not this is the best way to hear
Scarlatti is a matter of opinion. It certainly plays well to modern
sensibilities; but by the same token, it is an inauthentic way to present this
music, which is quite capable of standing and succeeding entirely on its own
and on the instrument for which it was written. Weiss’ well-played (+++) CD
ably continues his Scarlatti project, and will certainly please listeners
looking for a 21st-century pianistic approach to this 18th-century
music.

October 23, 2014

Beetle Busters: A Rogue Insect
and the People Who Track It. By Loree Griffin Burns. Photographs by Ellen
Harasimowicz. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $18.99.

The Next Wave: The Quest to
Harness the Power of the Oceans. By Elizabeth Rusch. Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt. $18.99.

These two entries in the
always excellent Scientists in the Field
series take readers from their own yards to the farthest reaches of Earth’s
oceans. Beetle Busters is about the
challenges of trying to find and eliminate an invasive pest that is a
significant danger to North American trees: the Asian longhorned beetle (ALB). This
is an attractive-looking inch-and-half-long insect with very long, striped
antennae. Female beetles chew into trees to lay their eggs, and when the eggs
hatch, the larvae chew their way out. If a tree harbors enough larvae, they can
kill it. So just kill the beetles and their larvae and problem solved, right?
Not so fast – Loree Griffin Burns explains why this is a difficult and complex
situation: the only way to kill the beetles when they are inside a tree is to
cut the tree down and run it through a wood chipper, which means destroying
some trees to protect others. To get young readers involved in this difficult
scientific issue, Burns repeatedly asks what readers would do if they had to
make the decision, and brings them along (with the help of clear and
informative photos by Ellen Harasimowicz) as scientists work on eradication.
Making the task even harder is the fact that the ALB closely resembles other
insects, and scientists must rely on people watching for, spotting and accurately
reporting ALBs – a difficult situation: “I’d been called hundreds of times
throughout my career by people thinking they had seen an Asian longhorned
beetle,” says one scientist, “and every single time, it wasn’t ALB.” But then
comes a call that is about the ALB,
and scientists soon find out just how bad the infestation is: very bad indeed. The
book’s narrative and photos take readers to forests infested by the ALB, to
labs where studies of the beetles and the trees they attack are done, and to
the U.S. Forest Service, where attempts are being made to predict where the ALB
may show up in the future. There are no easy answers to this infestation, and
Burns, to her credit, does not claim that there are. She ends the book by
repeating questions raised early in it about whether readers feel it is right
to cut infested trees – and whether they would feel the same way if the trees
were the only ones in their home’s neighborhood. Scientists themselves are not
sure about the tree-cutting program: there is nothing better available to stop
the ALB, but even those who cut the trees are unhappy that it is necessary –
and are involved in reforestation to try to replace, eventually, what is lost
in the battle.Beetle Busters is especially valuable because it shows that
ecological and scientific problems, even when acknowledged by all parties
affected by them, do not necessarily have neat solutions – or ones without
significant costs to us humans.

The Beetle Busters lesson is important because it needs to be applied
thoughtfully to issues on which people agree far less than they do about the
danger of the ALB. Finding and harnessing alternative sources of energy –
alternatives, that is, to fossil fuels – is one such issue. There is a great
deal of noise, social and political, surrounding this matter, and even a
scientifically oriented “how to do it” book such as The Next Wave must be read within a sociopolitical context. There
is no question that Earth’s oceans are sources of enormous power – power that
occurs naturally and could, if captured, produce huge amounts of electricity
without the necessity of burning oil, natural gas or coal. Devices that can catch and make use of
wave energy have, however, proved elusive. Now, Elizabeth Rusch writes, a
number of people and companies believe they have solved the problem of
harnessing waves’ energy, or are on the verge of solving it. Some approaches
involve devices that float atop the waves. Others involve ones that sit on the
ocean floor. Some devices have already been tested; others exist as prototypes.
Concepts differ; potential funders and investors are lining up behind one
approach or another – or failing to do so, being worried about failures in
tests and risks of deployment. And there are questions about how animals that
live in the oceans would be affected if humans started harnessing wave energy –
questions that are simply unanswerable in a laboratory environment, but that
could lead to torpedoing promising scientific developments in the name of
protecting wildlife. And then there is a broad question not discussed in the
book: how to get wave energy to areas far from the ocean. That is no small matter:
environmental extremists have successfully delayed or stopped many promising
alternative-energy projects by demanding that they be 100% harmless to
everything from birds or bats (in the case of on-shore wind farms) to people’s
lines of sight from land (in the case of off-shore ones). But moving energy
from the source of production to the place of consumption requires transport
mechanisms – that is what a nation’s power grid is all about. Without a grid
that extends to the area where wave power is harnessed, all that power will
simply sit out there, unavailable for use. But moving that power from Point A
to Point B will require heavy construction, heavy industry, and development of
power-grid sections to which area residents and professional environmental
agitators are unalterably opposed. Ultimately, the science to get energy from
ocean waves is not enough. There must also be enough social and political will
to put nonhuman species at some unknown level of risk for the sake of lessening
human dependence on fossil fuels; and there must also be enough will so that
transport mechanisms for zero-emission power can be placed where needed to
bring that power where it has to go. The
Next Wave tells only part of this story – the part involving science and
innovation – and tells it very well. Families would do well to go beyond
Rusch’s book to discuss the harsh non-scientific realities that will make it
very difficult, if not impossible, for the scientists profiled in this book to
do the social good that they are trying so hard to do.

The latest of Janee
Trasler’s books about three adorable chicks and the “adult” pig, cow and sheep
who take care of them ups the ante for babies and grown-up animals alike: a new chick hatches, followed in short
order by jealousy. “Get your feathers off our pig,” say the three original
chickies as the pig and the new baby brother dance together. Pig quickly
defuses the situation by inviting everyone to form a conga line. But then the
original chickies object to the new one throwing a beach ball to the cow – so
the cow forms a beach-ball team that includes everybody. And then: “No more
singing! Not one peep! We sing backup for our sheep!” So say the original
chicks – but the sheep sets up a five-piece band so everyone can take part in
the musical merry-making. Problems noted, problems explored, problems solved,
all within the two dozen pages of an attractive and sturdy board book. That,
is, problems almost solved, because
Trasler ends the book with – oops! – not one but several additional chicks
hatching. Now what? Presumably kids, certainly including big brother and big
sisters, will find out in the next adventure of the chickies.

The adventures continue for
world-traveling Dodsworth and the duck in a Level 3 edition of Dodsworth in Tokyo, an entry in the
“Green Light Readers” series (with this level, the highest, designated for
“reading independently”). Tim Egan builds the whole book, which was originally
published last year, around the duck’s now-well-known propensity for getting
into all sorts of trouble. Dodsworth worries about this from the start of the
book, noting that “Japan is a land of customs and manners and order” but that
“the duck wasn’t very good at those things.” The duck, of course, promises to
be on his best behavior, but Dodsworth keeps a very close eye on him and
repeatedly reminds him of the right way to behave – and, surprisingly, the duck
does quite well. But Dodsworth is sure, as readers will be, that this cannot go
on forever, and that is the tension in this modest, well-told story, which as
usual features reasonably accurate depictions of various locations that
Dodsworth and the duck visit. The duck becomes fascinated by a toy called a kendama – a ball attached by a string to
a cup – and proves highly skilled at cupping the ball, which Dodsworth himself
cannot manage to do. A little girl leaves her kendama behind in a park, and
Dodsworth and the duck wait for her to return so they can give it to her, but
to no avail; so they take it with them on the rest of their tour. Part of the
fun here involves how un-ducklike the duck is: Dodsworth has to rescue him from
water at one point, since he cannot swim. The duck cannot fly, either, and that
fact is what Egan uses to bring the good-behavior and kendama stories together
in an amusingly appropriate climax. And yes, eventually of course the duck makes a huge mess, as young readers will have
anticipated all along, but it all happens in so good-humored a way that even
Dodsworth finds himself laughing. Kids will laugh along with him.

Really good crime writers do
not need to set their novels in an isolated, brooding castle or on a remote
island, nor do they require twisted-looking, visibly demented characters either
as killers or as red herrings. What they do, what makes their books truly
frightening, is to set stories in everyday surroundings and people them with
characters so ordinary that even the notion that one of them may perpetrate
great evil is chilling. In other words, to quote Hannah Arendt’s famous phrase
in a different context, writers such as Alex Marwood explore “the banality of
evil,” and their books are all the more frightening as a result.

Marwood is the pseudonym of
British author Serena Mackesy, who wrote four books under her real name – The Temp, Virtue, Simply Heaven and Hold My Hand – before turning to intense
crime fiction with The Wicked Girls,
published in 2012 and now available in paperback. Mackesy/Marwood is, like her
settings, mundane on the face of things: a fiftysomething sometime journalist
who taught English for a while and even did some door-to-door selling. Her
father was a military historian and both her grandmothers were authors, but
there is nothing specific in her background that would seem to connect her with
the gritty, realistic and thoroughly ominous settings in which The Wicked Girls and her new book, The Killer Next Door, take place.

The Wicked Girls is a story about a horrible crime that, in a
sense, simply happened. The book’s impact comes from the fact that the perpetrators,
11-year-olds named Jade Walker and Annabel (Bel) Oldacre, who are responsible
for the death of a four-year-old named Chloe Francis, are themselves victims of
social-class expectations and their childhood environment – and may or may not
be able to escape those forces as adults. Narratively set 25 years after the
crime, featuring the girls of the title as grown women with new names – Jade is
now Kirsty Lindsay and Bel has become Amber Gordon – the book seesaws between
present and past, revealing details of the original crime bit by bit as Kirsty,
now a journalist, looks into a series of attacks on young women in the seaside
town of Whitmouth. Kirsty’s work brings her into contact with Amber for the
first time in 25 years, after Amber discovers a dead body at Funnland, the
amusement park where she works. Aside from the obvious irony of the place’s
name, it is very well-chosen for the events of the book: like clowns, intended
to bring enjoyment but frequently seeming downright creepy, amusement parks –
with their prepackaged rides, modest thrills and general air of seediness – have
something vaguely disturbing about them, and it is this undercurrent of things
being not quite right that Marwood explores and exploits with considerable
skill. Amusement parks are, by definition, crowded, and much of The Wicked Girls deals with the scary
aspects of crowds – not only the physically scary ones but also those derived
from the tendency of crowds to change subtly, almost imperceptibly, into mobs,
motivated by a strange sort of groupthink that prejudges, interprets reality
based on those prejudgments, and then acts as if that imagined reality is
identical with truth. The Wicked Girls,
which won an Edgar Award, has its expected share of twists and turns – it would
not be in the murder-mystery/psychological-thriller genre if it did not – but
it also has something more: compelling, carefully limned characters who are
just ordinary enough so it is easy to imagine living next door to them, totally
unaware not only of their past lives but also of their past and current
potential for good and evil. The very mundanity of the settings is what makes
them most ominous: like the Bates Motel in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and the Robert Bloch book on
which the movie is based, Funnland and Whitmouth are just real enough to make
readers look over their figurative shoulders while reading about what happens
there. You never really know, do you, just who lives next door or down the
block? If you think you know, based
on what you have been told, you can never be quite sure that anyone’s stated
biography is true, can you? Thinking too much about this invites paranoia, and
that is just what The Wicked Girls
produces: a feeling that there are depths in ordinary people that it is not
wise to explore too thoroughly, depths from which monsters can spring.

The identical underlying
theme is explored from another angle in The
Killer Next Door, an otherwise very different mystery set not in a creepy
seaside amusement park but in an ordinary urban rooming house. The book’s structure
is a well-worn one: a group of people, thrown together by circumstance but
otherwise unrelated, bonds because of something horrible that happens – and
then the bond starts to sever as people realize that someone in the group
perpetrated the gory crime (and it is
gory, possibly too much so for some readers). The rundown rooming house where
the book is set – think Bates Motel again – stands for the anonymity of big
cities everywhere, although Marwood skillfully turns the story into a
specific-to-London tale through careful scene painting (indeed, U.S readers
should be prepared, here as in The Wicked
Girls, to look up some of the British references and vocabulary with which
both books are packed). The building’s residents could easily descend into
cardboard types, and a couple of them do, but by and large they are
well-developed enough so readers will genuinely care about them and fear for
them. This is especially the case with Lisa, also known as Collette, who is on
the run after seeing her shady ex-boss and his goons beat a man to death.
Because Lisa’s mother is dying in a nursing home and Lisa wants to be nearby, she
has rented her threadbare room in the shabby boardinghouse – putting herself
under the thumb of repulsive landlord Roy Preece (who is a bit too typecast: oily,
lecherous, miserly, grossly obese and focused on getting room deposits and
rents in cash so he can spend time ignoring the building’s awful-smelling
backed-up drains). The other building residents are political-asylum-seeker
Hossein Zanjani, elderly longtime resident Vesta Collins, part-time worker
Thomas Dunbar, music teacher Gerard Bright, and teenage runaway Cher Farrell.
Lisa/Collette moves into an apartment that used to belong to Nikki, a murder
victim – and, yes, it gradually becomes clear that she was far from the only
one, and that someone in the building is responsible. The story is loosely
based on a famous British serial-murder case in which a man named Dennis Nilsen
killed at least 12 people between 1978 and 1983. But even readers familiar with
that story, which few U.S. readers will likely know, will not find The Killer Next Door spoiled by their
knowledge, because what the book is really about is how well you know, or ever
can know, the people living just a few feet away from you. It is this theme, so
similar to the one Marwood explores in The
Wicked Girls, that gives The Killer
Next Door both its power and its ability to evoke suspense: there is
something chillingly real about the realization that even a person’s stated
background may be true or false, may reveal little or much about that person’s
true feelings and motives, and may or may not be a good guide to what that
person will do and how others should deal with him or her. Both The Wicked Girls and The Killer Next Door are self-contained:
Marwood appears to have no interest in centering her mysteries on a recurring
detective or other character, and for that reason, she can take the figurative
gloves off and have things happen to her characters that are as scary and
brutal as she wishes, which in these books can be quite brutal. Indeed, Marwood’s descriptive passages will be a bit
much for some readers, taking parts of her books closer to the horror genre
than to that of mystery/thriller. Readers should be prepared: the depths of
depravity are not to be explored lightly, and Marwood does not shrink from
bringing readers into them. Those depths create a decidedly uncomfortable place
– made all the more so by the realization that it may be located right next to
you.